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W(^t Beatf) of 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN, 



APRIL 15, 1865. 



Slj^ i^atli nf fr^atb^nt ffitnrnln* 



A y /J>' 

SERMON 



PRtACHED IN 



ST. PETER'S CHURCH, ALBANY, N. Y., 



WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1865, 



REV. WILLIAM T. WILSON, M.A., 

RECTOR. 



ALBANY : 

WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, 

1865. 



_ ^^ipY'lvxV-O ci \S, \ — 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Albany. April 19. 1865. 
The Rev. Wm. T. Wilson : 

Dear Sir — The undersigned, members of the vestry of St. 
Peter's Church, having listened with deep interest to the very 
!iI){)ropriate and impressive discourse delivered by you this 
morning, on the occasion of the funeral solemnities in honor of 
our late President, the lamented Abraham Lincoln, would 
earnestly request you to furnish them with a copy for publica- 
tion ; and in making this request, they beg leave to assure you 
they express not less the general feeling of the congregation 
than their own. 

Very respectfully, your friends and parishioners. 
ORLANDO MEADS. JAMES KIDD, 

.JOHN 1 AYLER COOPER. .JOSEPH PACKARD, 
JOHN TWEDDLE. JESSE C. POTTS, 

HARMON ITMPELLY, WM. N. FASSETT, 

MOSES PATTEN. PHILIP TEN EYCK. 



St. Peter's Rectory, Albany, April 20. 1865. 
Gentlemen : 

In reply to your kind note, asking for a copy of the sermon 
preached by me yesterday at St. Peter's Church, in commemo- 
ration of our late President. Abraham Lincoln. I have only to 
aay, that I very cheerfully comply with your request. The 
sermon Is a simple and hurried one, yet I am glad to print it as 
a poor, but heartfelt tribute to the memory of a good man. 
Yours very respectfully, 

WILLIAM T. WILSON. 

To THE Gentlemen of the Vestry of St. Peter's. 



®r^er ot IDiviue Service. 



The De Pbofundis : 
"Out of the (leeji have I called unto thee, O Jjord."— Choir. 

Sentences from the Burial Office : 
"I am the Resurrection and the Life." 

The Lesser Litany : 
"O Christ, hear us." 

Anthem from the Burial Office : 
'Lord, let me know my end iiud the numher of my daj's."- 

('hoir. 

liEssoN : 1 Cor. xv, 20. 

Hymn 1.30. 
"Peaee, troubled soul." — Choir. 

Sermon. 

Hymn 201 : 
"Who are these in bright array?" — Choir. 

Prayers from the Birial Office. 

Sentence from the Revei«\tions : 
"I heard a voiee from Heaven. "—.i/fo Solo. 

Benediction. 



SERMON. 



"Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth !" 
What sad verification of the Wise Man's words has 
just come to us! how sudden and appalling the dis- 
aster that has fallen upon the nation I Perhaps never 
before was the revulsion of feeling in a people greater ; 
never before did a whole country pass instantaneously 
and at a single step from the height of exultation to 
the lowest depth of grief. These were to have been 
days of rejoicing. We were about to lift up our hearts 
in thanksgiving. All things conspired to make us 
glad. Victory^ brilliant and unexampled, had just 
crowned our arms. The citadel of the Rebellion had 
fallen. That army which from the first had been its 
strong right arm had been shattered and taken. The 
nation's flag floated once again over all the principal 
cities of the South. The season in which we celebrate 
the Ijord's Resurrection promised to be made memor- 
able in our annals by the restoration of public order 



8 

and unity and peace. The national integrity liad been 
vindicated in four years of gigantic strife. The drum- 
beat, the call to arms, had ceased. The long agony 
and sacrifice, and sword and flame of war, were over 
and done. The veterans of many a hard-fought field 
were turning their expectant eyes toward home. Glad 
hearts were yearning to go forth and meet them. The 
former days were to return. The sword was to be ex- 
changed for the plough-share, and the pruning-hook 
was again to replace the spear. Surely, never were a 
people on the eve of a greater or more exultant joy! 

But in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, by 
the hand of an assassin, the great joy is dimmed by 
a great grief. Far and wide over the whole land the 
shock of this disaster falls. Everywhere you see it 
reflected in pale and horror-stricken faces. The prepa- 
rations of jubilee are turned into the preparations of 
bereavement. The draped and half -hung flags attest 
the affliction of the people. The triumphal procession 
gives way to the procession of mourners. The ovation 
becomes a funeral, and the Te Deum of victory sinks 
into the wail for the dead. 

It is the contrast of a week ! Thou knowest not what 
a day may bring forth ! But yesterday, as it seems, 
and we were listening to the merry peal of bells, and 



9 

the boom of cannon, and the shouts of a muUitude — 
and to-day it is the funeral knell and the minute-gun! 
A nation sorrows for its great and honored Chief. 

There is something strangely pathetic, strangely 
tragic, both in the time and manner of this great man's 
death. He had been spared to his country in the hour 
of her trial, in the agony of her threatened dissolution, 
in all her sad passage through the valley of humilia- 
tion, only to be taken away in the first dawn of her 
returning and added greatness. His had been the most 
fearful responsibility under which man had stood in 
modern times — responsibility which had furrowed brow 
and cheek with ceaseless cares and great anxieties — 
and he was barely permitted to taste the rewards of a 
faithful stewardship in the commendation of his coun- 
trymen and of the world. No other man was so identi- 
fied with the national crisis in which he lived. The 
position he occupied made him its Representative Man. 
Events had forced upon him that responsibility in 
which the only alternative was an immortality of honor 
or an immortality of shame. Perhaps, brethren, even 
now, we cannot fully realize what these four years past 
have been to this weary and heavy-laden man. There 
is little or nothing in our own experience to help us 
9 



10 

to it. However intense our interest in the struggle, 
ours has been only a private and individual responsibil- 
ity. A nation's fate lay not in our keeping. Upon 
our every thought, and word, and deed, there has been 
no ceaseless and imposed constraint. How often has 
our speech been inconsiderate and rash ! We were not 
forced to weigh it. There has been no fearful, consum- 
ing, never-ending care which brought us weary days 
and sleepless nights. But upon the heart of this one 
man the gathered burden of the Nation was laid. The 
destiny of his Country was in his keeping. Upon his 
wisdom, patience, firmness, integrity, forbearance, and 
self-control, what mighty issues hung ! He lived in the 
crisis of an hour when his every act must reach on, in 
its effect, to generations yet unborn. I do not wonder 
that the painter of the great picture in the Rotunda, 
has given to that face a sad, and worn, and weary look. 
What man could front such constant and weighty re- 
sponsibilities and not look sad, and worn, and weary? 
There must have been many hours in which he felt 
utterly alone, when the travail of his soul was in secret, 
when there was borne in upon him that bitter sense of 
solitariness which belongs to the Prophets of the Race, 
which must be the lot of those who are intrusted with 
the destinies of nations. 



11 

It is scarcely possible that we private citizens should 
ever be just, during life, to our great public men. We 
cannot put ourselves in their position ; we cannot make 
the allowances that are due. It is so easy to criticise 
an act when the responsibility of that act is not brought 
home to you — so easy to overlook great qualities, and 
seize upon small defects of character. Sincerely and 
deeply as we all honor and mourn for him who is 
dead, perhaps there is no single one of us who has not 
at times spoken of him impatiently or harshly. I do 
not refer to this in the way of self-condemnation ; in 
the confusions and perplexities of such a crisis it was 
almost inevitable; no life is free from its mis-judg- 
ments and mistakes, and your criticism and mine may 
or may not have been just — but perhaps we would not 
have made it, or made it more gently, had we been able 
to realize for ourselves all the trying anxieties of his 
position. 

Yet it is one of the conditions of ti*ue greatness not 
to be dependent on prompt recognition or popular sym- 
pathy — to be content to labor and to wait. And he 
waited, as we see it now, with a magnanimous and 
wondrous patience. In tbe frequent and marked alter- 
nations of public feeling we have heard from liim no 
murmur of complaint. And he is stricken down in 



12 

the very hour when, without exception, and^ without 
distinction of party, the sentiment of the whole coun- 
try was clear in its recognition of his unswerving fidel- 
ity to his trust. Sweet, indeed, to Abraham Lincoln, 
would have been the cup which even now a grateful 
Nation had lifted to his lips. It is not in human na- 
ture for even true greatness to be indifferent to the re- 
freshment of popular favor after it has borne the heat 
and burden of the day. It can do without it, if neces- 
sary, but it is none the less welcome when it comes. 
What a tragic taking-off , then, was this ! 

But the fact that the President did not live to reap 
the full measure of the Nation's applause is not that 
which is most pathetic in his fate. It is but simple 
justice to him to say that, far beyond all other thoughts, 
rose his pure and lofty patriotism. It is the endow- 
ment of large natures to be superior to personal con- 
siderations, and no one will deny that to the President's 
heart the salvation of his country was far dearer than 
the appreciation of his countrymen. He had led her 
through trial unparalleled in her history. Upon him 
had fallen the cares of four such years as she had never 
known. And, at last, after all the harassing vicissitudes 
of war he saw upon the mountains the shining feet of 
the Messengers of Peace. But he saw them only from 



13 

afar. Like another leader of another people it was not 
permitted him to pass over with his nation into the 
promised land. On the hither side his own steps were 
stayed. It was not given him to he the Chief Magistrate 
of a country once again at unity, concord, and peace. 
His own life was to complete that costly sacrifice which 
had been heaped up on her altars. A fate tragic and 
pathetic indeed ! 

He has passed into history. This is not the occasion 
or the place to vindicate or criticise the political prin- 
ciples that have marked his public life. Nor, even 
if it were fitting, would it be possible to make any fair 
and impartial estimate of him as a statesman now. 
After death we see men more as they really are, yet 
in the first hours of his decease, we cannot adequately 
do justice to the memory of a great public man. Time 
alone can give him his true place in the world's history. 
The future historian of this Avar will be also the his- 
torian of Abrahaai LINCOL^. When the films of mis- 
conception and passion and prejudice have passed away, 
when there remains not a vestige of those partizan- 
ships from which no man in his generation can be 
ever wholly free, when the coming years shall have de- 
termined beyond appeal the real character of every 
issue that has been involved in tlie struggle, when in 



14 

the calm vision which distance brings, men see things 
and events in their just relations and proportions — 
then, and not till then, will the true biography of the 
President be written. The truest life stands in the 
closest relation to the pre.'^ent and to the future. Every 
man who aspires to be a leader among his fellows must 
be not only an interpreter of his own age, but also a 
herald of the age which is to come. He is so linked 
with his race that these conditions are involved in his 
work in the world. To the coming generation, then, 
it belongs to determine what the work of this man has 
been. Posterity is just. History is impartial. We 
need not fear to leave the reputation of the lamented 
dead with them. In some respect they may reverse or 
modify our judgments, but whatever position is as- 
signed him among the benefactors of mankind, we 
cannot doubt that it will be a great and honored one. 

But while not jn-esuming to (ix the position of the 
statesman, it is fitting that we should do homage to 
the personal worth and virtues of the man. That, at 
least, is a demand of the hour. It is not often that the 
pulpit can be used for a funeral eulogium. In this 
sacred place, where we come before God with the ac- 
knowledgment that we are all miserable sinners, one 
shrinks from anvthing that might seem to savor of 



15 

extravagance or adulation. We are reminded that the 
fairest human Ufe, in God's sight, is not without its 
stain; that it must fall infinitely short of that high 
ideal which the Gosj^el has set before us. In the pres- 
ence of the Lord, and in His holy temple, we would 
utter no undeserved, or forced, or unreal words. Yet 
there are times when, even in God's house, the tribute 
of praise in the recognition of human worth, is not 
only permissible but just. When dignity of public 
station is united to loftiness and purity of character, 
the homage should not be uncertain or reluctant that 
is spoken here. And yet on this occasion I can scarcely 
find words large and strong enough to render it. I 
can do but poor, brief justice to my theme. 

How fully the moral virtues of the late President 
had commended themselves to the appreciation of his 
country, has its best witness in the unvarying tone of 
the popular press. I have looked in vain for any ex- 
pression of detraction. The friends and the opponents 
of his administration have vied with each other in 
generous tributes to his memory. There has been 
something strangely touching and inspiring in the 
spectacle of these few days past— a whole people for- 
getting all political differences to unite in the recogni- 
tion of moral worth. The fact is too significant to be 



16 

overlooked, that the qualities of the lamented dead 
which are foremost upon every lij), and which there 
is found none to dispute, are his simple and unvarying 
goodness, his incorruptible integrity of character, his 
purity and straightforwardness of purpose. These are 
not the most dazzling qualities, yet they are those which 
endear a man to his fellows. When all is over, we fall 
back upon them as the elements which must shape our 
estimate of his real worth. We admire brilliancy of 
intellect, but we have tears for the memory of the good. 
It is moral greatness which enshrines a man in the 
hearts of his countrymen, and vindicates at last its su- 
periority to any other. And he was strong and patient ; 
firm, yet gentle; just, but merciful. What that true, 
brave, earnest, unselfish life has been to the Nation in 
all these years of trial, perhaps we shall never fully 
know. Had his liigh trust been held by an unscrupu- 
lous and ambitious man, no imagination could picture 
all the horrors that might have been before us. But 
in the integrity of its Head, the Nation reposed with 
an implicit trust; amid all 'the stormy passions and 
cloudy be-wilderments of the time, that shone out like 
a guiding star. Honesty was the quality which, 
whether in praise or depreciation, was always associated 
with his name; and, although honesty is not all that 



17 

is required of a leader, history is the witness that the 
most splendid endowments without that have never 
given to the world a life of true beneficence. An 
honest man, the poet says, is the noblest work of God ; 
and the minister of God can select no moral character 
more worthy of his eulogium. Yes, our President was 
a simple, good, and honest man. In him we have lost 
what we could ill afford to lose. He has been called 
the purest public man of his day; and, however that 
may be, it is no disparagement to others to say that the 
death of Abraham Lincoln was an untimely death, 
an inscrutable dispensation of Providence, a great na- 
tional disaster. We mourn for him as for an irrepa- 
rable loss, as we have never mourned at the worst tid- 
ings of defeat. 

Nor is this all for which we have to mourn. There 
is another cause for mourning, in which shame mingles 
with grief. Our annals have been defaced by what 
before had been to them an unknown crime. The 
country has been shocked, absolutely stunned, by its 
commission. Treason and rebellious war we had 
become familiar with. Even the wild barbarities of 
this strife we could find it in our hearts to pardon. 
But no man is found to palliate the assassin's foul 
and stealthy deed. I would not speak one word to stir 
in you any thought of vengeance. That were, indeed, 
3 



18 

unfitting liere. Rage is cruel, and impotent, and blind ; 
and the worst that it could do would be as nothing in 
comparison with the guilt of the assassin. Let Justice 
hold the even tenor of her way, and let the Law exact 
the penalty of its own violation. 

But there is another penalty, awful, inexorable, re- 
morseless, which has come upon that guilty soul al- 
ready, and which every succeeding age will take up and 
confirm. Two men have just entered upon an earthly 
immortality: the one as a Martyr of Liberty, beloved, 
honored and lamented, the other as the greatest crimi- 
nal of modern times, upon whom are heaped a nation's 
execrations. Time will never take that burden off. 

•'The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months, 
The months will add themselves and make the years, 
The years will roll into the centuries. 
And his will ever be a name of scorn" — 

Yes, forever a name of execration, infamy, and scorn. 
What an awful immortality is this! To be pursued 
from generation to generation by a people's endless 
curse; his very name a word of loathing even upon 
little children's lips! For him, as for the first murderer 
of the world, is not his punishment greater indeed than 
he can bear? 

But while we stand aghast before his crime, let us 
remember that it is but a fearful manifestation of that 



19 

same sin which is common to us all. This should be 
a day not merely of mourning, but of humiliation. 
The possibilities of murder are in every heart. The 
spirit of Cain is in the race, and at a word it may 
blossom into crime in you and me. We are bound 
together in a mysterious fellowship of good and evil. 
This criminal, outcast and outlaw though he be, may 
yet claim kindred with us in a sad brotherhood of sin. 
There is no evil done under the sun in which, remotely, 
we have not our share. While, therefore, we execrate 
the crime, let us not forget to mourn, with tears and 
penitence, that sinfulness in ourselves and in the world, 
which has made such crime possible. 

And with this thought we should be slow to charge 
complicity in it upon others. It is far too dreadful, 
too awful, too diabolical, for light or indiscriminate 
accusation. We would fain believe, even against evi- 
dence, if it must be, that no leader of the rebellion 
could incite or api)rove of such a damning deed. Still 
less should it embitter our feeling;^ towards the people 
of the South. They have proved themselves desperate 
rebels and traitors, it is true, but they have proved 
also their gallantry on many a stricken field, and 
men who rush undaunted upon the cannon's mouth, 
and bare their naked breasts to the glittering steel, 
are not the men who make or countenance assassins. 



20 

I have already spoken of what seemed so tragic 
and pathetic in our President's death. How could it 
be otherwise than hard, after all this care, misrepre- 
sentation, and apparent defeat of fame, to be stricken 
down in the moment of his triumph, and in the hour 
of his country's awakening and grateful recognition? 
Yet, in another and deeper reference, his death was 
not so untimely as it seems. Never, perhaps, could 
he have been better prepared to be summoned into 
the presence of his Maker. In Republics, as in King- 
doms, rulers reign by the grace of God. Their re- 
sponsibility is not only to the people. There is an- 
other tribunal before which they must give account 
of their stewardship, and answer for the things that 
they have done. To that tribunal Abraham Lin- 
coln has passed, not in an hour of pride, not in a 
mood of vindictiveness, not in the darkness of revenge ; 
but "when," in the eloquent tribute of a political oppo- 
nent, "all his thoughts were concentrated upon peace, 
and when his heart was full of purposes of mercy." 
Sic semper tyrannis! was the shout of the assassin, 
as he brandished liis weapon before a horror stricken 
crowd after he had done that dastard deed. Ah! poor, 
counterfeit, and painted passion. Foul, false, and 
slanderous word! It dims not the glory that settles 
on that bowed and bruised head! Most merciful of 
victors, the world will never couple "tyrant*" with 



21 

thy name! Thine was not the ambition of a Caesar 
to purchase thy self-exaltation with thy country's 
loss! The people of thy deliverance will suffer no 
aspersion to rest upon thy fame, and in its indignant 
refutation history will lay the foundation of thy great 
renown ! 

No! the reputation of the dead President is not 
stained by one single act of tyranny. If ever revenge 
may be excusable, it might have been in him. From 
the hour of his inauguration he had been engaged in 
a life and death struggle with the nation's foes, and 
sometimes the struggle seemed to go hard against him. 
Yet the moment the assurance of victory was unalter- 
ably his, he showed a true Christian magnanimity, 
a marvelous and generous forbearance. In word or 
deed there is no trace of meditated vengeance. A 
true father of his country^ he went forth with com- 
passion and tears and gladness to meet his erring but 
scarce repentant sons. And he himself was called 
into the presence of the Great Father ''when all his 
thoughts were concentrated upon peace, and when his 
heart was full of puiposes of mercy." Blessed are 
the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children 
of God; blessed are the merciful, for they shall ob- 
tain mercy. Let that be his epitaph ! We listen eagerly 
to catch a great man's dying words. But, in the 
hour before his death, the President was silent and 



22 

sad. And after the fatal messenger had sped, he died 
and made no sign. We must seek the moral of his 
life, not in a phrase, but in his crowning purpose of 
beneficence. The face, they say, after death, was 
clothed with a sweet and strange serenity. May we 
not believe that he who sought peave so earnestly, liad 
found i)eace, yet not the peace he sought? The peace 
which the world cannot give. The peace that passeth 
understanding. The peace which is won through con- 
flict, and which comes as the reward of faithfulness 
in that. The peace which Christ alone giveth. Such 
peace as He gave to His disciples, when, showing them 
His stricken side, and holding up His wounded hands. 
He said: "Mi/ peace I give unto you!" 

Brethren, how can we better honor the memory of 
the dead than in the reflection of his own great 
charity — the fulfillment of his own beneficent designs? 
This is no hour for muttered vengeance. This is no 
time for ruthless retribution. It would be a stroke 
more cruel even than the blow of the assassin to in- 
augurate a reign of terror with his burial, and off'er 
a holocaust of human victims at his tomb. Peace and 
Mercy! is not this the legacy, the watchword he has 
left us, w4th which to go forth and meet a vanquished, 
yet kindred, foe? Such mercy as may be consistent 



23 

with the safety of the Republic; and such peace as 
may lay deep and broad again the foundation for a 
free, restored, and reunited People. 

And in oui' bereavement, let us not forget to dis- 
cern the finger of God, to recognize His Fatherly cor- 
rection. It requires no little effort to bring ourselves 
to think of our affliction thus. Our first and almost 
irresistible impulse is to view it simply as an un- 
mitigated disaster. Yet there is no failure and no 
loss in the economy of the infinite Wisdom. We can- 
not doubt that in the permission of that deed God had 
a wise and far-reaching purpose. W^e cannot tell what 
it may be, but w^e know that it is always His to over- 
rule evil for good. Perhaps it was to chasten, in these 
first hours of triumph, a too arrogant and exultant 
joy. Perhaps it was to secure us from the immodera- 
tion of victory, and lead us to wait humbly upon that 
Providence from whom all victory comes. Perhaps 
it was to deepen our devotion to our country, by this 
final and crowning sacrifice which the preservation of 
her integrity has cost. It would seem that the nation 
must grow as does the church, from the seed sown 
in the martyr's blood. That this visitation has soft- 
ened men's hearts strangely, we ourselves can see. 
Not since the commencement of this sad war has there 



24 

been such unity of feeling. It is no partizan spirit 
that has draped the land in habiliments of woe. Party 
lines and animosities seem for the time to have ceased, 
and we are again a great people, reunited in a great 
grief. 

Let the pure, unselfish patriotism of the honored dead 
be unto us a lesson teaching by example! Let it 
animate and inspire us ! Let us cherish in our hearts, 
and strive to realize in our lives, a true Christian 
patriotism — not merely the patriotism which is a civic 
virtue, but the patriotism which is a religious duty! 
May we grow in faith and love and devotion to the 
Nation. May we hold it as the goodly heritage which 
we have received from our fathers, and which we are 
to transmit to our children. May ours be the cheer- 
ful, willing, holy self-sacrifice, if for further sacrifice 
there should be any call, which should become the 
Christian patriot, which should belong to the Christian 
citizen. In prayer, and the strength which comes of 
prayer, we may do the work that has been given us to 
do. Then shall this fair land, this continent guarded 
by the mountains and girded by the seas, become the 
heritage of our children and of our children's chil- 
dren — its laws respected, its authority inviolate, the 
integral unity of its territory unimpaired, stable in 
the righteousness that exalteth a nation, and under the 



25 

majesty of a flag which droops upon no field — symbol 
of power and purity — the home of Freedom, the home 
of Justice, and the home of Peace ! 

As for our dead President, his work is done. Care 
shall furrow brow and cheek no more. That great 
heart is bowed no longer beneath the affliction of his 
people. The long weariness is over and past. The 
sad face is calm and still and untroubled now. Even 
as we speak they are bearing him to the long home 
and the narrow^ house — they are reading at the Na- 
tion's Capital the burial ser\dce for the dead — earth 
to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust; looking 
for the general Resurrection and the life of the world 
to come. Yes! the life of the world to come. Let us 
comfort one another with these words! Not vainly 
do these yet unwithered Easter flowers hold their place 
amidst all the drapery of grief. They symbolize an 
immortal hope, the triumph over death and the resur- 
rection from the dead. The faithful servant, we may 
trust, hath entered into the joy of his Lord. Let us 
leave him to his rest — the blessedness of them who 
rest from their labors! 

4 



